Heart Healthy Guidelines with Dr. Amit Thosani
Written by Melissa Schenkman, MPH, MSJ
For millennials, redefining ourselves has become a way of life. From moving to new cities and taking on new career opportunities with regular frequency, change has become our norm.
Our health is no different. We are redefining the face of what heart disease too. Considered an old person’s disease, cardiovascular illness was found in millennials 21% more than in Generation X, according to the most recent Blue Cross Blue Shield Health of Millennials Report. Not a good sign for our future.
Fortunately, we each have the power to change that. It’s why YMyHealth is focusing on raising awareness of heart disease in Generation Y and introducing you to ways our fellow millennials can improve their heart health.
The ALYKA Health app is one of them. Created four years ago, by Ali Rahimi, MD, MPH, and his team, the app pulls in your health data, providing you with a customized plan for improving areas of your life that increase your heart disease risk. Altogether it can reduce your risk of heart disease by 50%. (Read more about the app in this YMyHealth story.)
Recently, Rahimi partnered with Amit Thosani, MD, who he trained with in Boston, to build a heart health guide.
“In the cardiovascular field, we think there is a ton of opportunity to educate people about risk factors and major health issues that often aren’t addressed until they become a problem,” said Thosani, ALYKA Health’s Chief Medical Officer. “To tell you to make change is one thing, but life doesn’t stop for health issues for us or our patients.”
Amit Thosani, MD, is the Chief Medical Officer at ALYKA Health.
The Importance of Maintaining Heart Health
Thosani knows firsthand what it is like to live a hectic life. As a cardiac electrophysiologist—a specialty focused on treating and fixing abnormal heart rhythms—his day starts around 4:45 am, he performs three or four surgeries a day and by the afternoon is working on administrative tasks for his program.
So, he understands what a challenge it can be for the millennial age group to maintain a proper diet of fresh fruits and vegetables, and exercise regularly, when they already have so many demands on their time.
“When you are young and busy starting your career or being in the middle of it, it’s easy to forget about yourself and your own health,” Thosani said.
But you should not. Heart disease, Thosani tells me, often develops at a young age, as early as people’s 20s.
One of the things he finds to be unique to the millennial community, is that very often our first experience with or realization that heart conditions can affect us comes from seeing our own parents or other relatives affected by cardiovascular disease, such as having heart attack or needing heart valve replacement.
“’Wait a second,’ someone in their mid 20s or early 40s will think: ‘If this happened to my mom or dad, what do I need to do to keep this from happening to me?” Thosani said. While he finds this knowledge to be a big motivator for change, it should not be our main one. Instead, he points out that screening for heart disease—assessments of blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar—occur during the millennial-aged timeframe. However, connecting the dots between your test results and the changes you need to make to stay heart healthy, requires more.
That’s where the new Heart Health Guide Thosani, and his ALYKA Health colleagues developed can make a difference. It’s part of one-stop shop for navigating your cardiovascular health, making it easily accessible and understandable for busy millennials in its digital form on the app, as well as in print for those preferring a less high-tech version.
What is a Heart Health Guide?
Education and Information on Cardiovascular Health
ALYKA Health’s Heart Health Guide provides a broad overview of why your heart health matters. Plus, puts detailed information in your hands so that you have the tools you need to guide your own healthcare when it comes to heart and advocate for it at your doctor’s office.
It does so by showing you statistics like the number of deaths in the world caused by heart disease versus other diseases, explaining the major risk factors for heart disease are, including ones you may not have thought of. The guide also provides information on the screening tests and what steps you can take to lower your heart disease risk.
The Benefits of a Heart Health Guide
Thosani and his colleagues designed the guide “to put into writing the very basics of what heart health is and why it’s important.” Their goal was two-fold: raise awareness about heart disease and the issues surrounding it and develop a very simple and relatable summary of the key components for maintaining good cardiovascular health and wellness.
Education and Information on Cardiovascular Health
While patients today have access to their electronic medical record and can see all their numbers, its often without any context. “It’s sort of like giving me the blueprints to building a skyscraper in New York City, and then having to go at it, right? Thosani said. “No matter how intelligent I am, if the information is not put into context for me, it’s not meaningful.”
So, part of the thought process in providing education and information on cardiovascular health in this guide is to help patients view the widely heard of measures and risk factors from a proper lens. The guide not only provides the basic definitions, but context as to how the heart is affected, and even steps on to change the numbers and your quality of lifelong term.
Prevention of Heart Disease?
The guide shows you the key areas of your life that you should focus on for preventing heart disease and helps you understand what those actual behavioral risk factors are. They include smoking, diet, exercise, and stress. It even takes a step further, by giving specific steps you can take action on to decrease your risk in these areas.
The guide also highlights health conditions that can increase your heart disease risk including to that may not be as well-known for doing that, sleep apnea and metabolic syndrome.
Early Detection of Heart Disease
A key component of detecting heart disease early is knowing that you are getting the heart screenings you need at your doctor’s office. The guide provides an overview of each of these tests:
· Total cholesterol
· LDL (bad) cholesterol
· Heart rate
· Blood Pressure
· Blood Sugar
· Body Mass Index
The Heart Health Guide not only defines these and provides the “why” behind how they impact the heart, but also provides information on what are considered the normal versus abnormal values for these tests.
Frequently Asked Questions About Your Cardiovascular Health
Finally, the guide provides a list of 12 questions that Thosani and his fellow cardiologists who created the guide thinks are important for patients to ask at their visits.
“In many cases, a doctor’s visit can be overwhelming. For that reason, I think the more informed our patients are going into their visits, the more they’re going to get out of those visits and have their concerns addressed,” Thosani said. Having this list of questions handy can make a big difference.
A sample of some of the risk factors for heart disease and how they impact the heart directly, as they are described in the guide.
How to Use the Heart Health Guide
Thosani sees the guide as an invitation for people to explore the key factors of cardiovascular health.
“A lot of these things are habits that develop in our younger years that then lead to health issues in the future,” Thosani points out.
Millennials should read through the guide to learn about the spectrum of cardiovascular health and disease, gaining an understanding that these are not issues of older people. Then, decide what changes you need to make and partner with your doctor to do so. A great starting point: Ask your doctor some of the questions on the guide’s ‘most frequently asked questions’ list that are relevant to you.
“I think if there’s a take home point for millennials, it’s to use the guide to become more educated about what healthy habits are now, so that hopefully in the future when you come to see someone like me, we have addressed some of those things years earlier.”
Click here to download a copy of ALYKA Health's Heart Health Guide
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Click here to download a copy of ALYKA Health's Heart Health Guide 〰️
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